A blog on the current crises in the Middle East and news accounts unpublished by the US press. Daily timeline of events in Iraq as collected from stories and dispatches in the French and Italian media: Le Monde (Paris), Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), La Repubblica (Rome), L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) and occasionally from El Mundo (Madrid).

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Terror and Injustice

This article was published the other day by L'Orient-Le Jour:

Experts and Muslim spokesmen say that those responsible for the bombings in London, as in Madrid or New York, were propelled by a sentiment of injustice and that their motives are more political than religious. While unequivocally condeming the use of blind violence, these observers believe that in order to defeat the terrorists, it is crucial to understand their motives, which are dominated by anger and frustation towards the West.

We must investigate what pushed these persons to undertake such actions and how they came to hate the West to such a degree, comments Imran Wahid, representative of radical Islamist Hizbi Tahrir in Great Britain. Islam forbids the murder of civilians, but these events (the London bombings) have occured in a specific context. The reality is that last week 200 Afgan civilians were killed (..) –this did not produce four times more pain and anguish than for fifty civilians in London, said Wahid.

François Burgat of France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, one of the most respected French experts of the modern Arab world, has the following to say: The state of mind in the Arab street is rather homogenous : everyone shares a profound sentiment of injustice and resentment against the several and vascillating pressures on them exerted by the West. This goes for 95% of the Arab population. Reason No. 1 for the radicalization of the current generation is Palestine and the refusal by the international community to enforce rules which it says are universal against Israel. Reason No. 2 is Iraq. First, the Iraqi children who died as a result of the embargo and then in the war. Reason No. 3 is Western support for the maintenance in power of regimes seen as illegitimate.

The Islamist rhetoric of Osama Bin Laden is less important than political demands, says reporter Robert Fisk, one of the rare Westerners to have interviewed the world’s most wanted man. They are trying to push British public opinion towards forcing Tony Blair out of Iraq, out of the alliance with the United States and out of his support for Bush policies in the Middle East. It’s easy for Tony Blair to call the bombings barbaric but how many civilians were killed in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq? Or children decapitated by cluster bombs? When they die, they’re only collateral damage. When we die, we’re victims of barbaric acts of terrorism. Osama bin Laden said in a recent video : «If you bomb our cities, we will bomb yours, says Fisk. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden said, « Ask yourselves why we don’t target Sweden. »

For Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Speaker of the Muslim Parliament of Britain, the keyword is injustice. There is an immovable sentiment that injustices have been committed against Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and elsewhere. And there are ghettos in those countries. If we don’t resolve the social alienation of our youth, it will be possible for demogogues within our own communities to exploit them for their own aims.

A 2004 joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier prepared for Tony Blair — ‘Young Muslims and Extremism’ — is reported to say (in one of Rupe's rags) the Iraq war is a key cause of young Britons turning to terrorism. The analysis is reported:

“It seems that a particularly strong cause of disillusionment among Muslims, including young Muslims, is a perceived ‘double standard’ in the foreign policy of western governments, in particular Britain and the US."

“The perception is that passive ‘oppression’, as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to ‘active oppression’. The war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam.”

``The greatest danger is that we fail to face up to the nature of the threat that we´re dealing with…And what we are confronting here is an evil ideology. ... It is a battle of ideas, of hearts and of minds, both within Islam and outside it.´´Tony Blair July 16th 2005

Evil ideology + young Muslims + DIY Bombs = Terror

Now we have even more "Anti terror" legislation planned in the UK, upon which Charles Clarke on the BBC "PM" program said tonight all parties agree and which they can move ahead with very quickly.